1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for an electronic secretary for storing various object operations such as documents and tables using the office automation (OA) software and for allowing the electronic secretary optionally to exchange the registered automatic operation for the manual operation and vice versa.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, word processors, personal computers, facsimile equipment, copying machines, telephone sets, and Photoelectro-magnetic files have been used as OA equipment. Each of the above equipments has been improved in usability as equipment for special use (stand-alone equipment) at first. However, some of those equipments have been combined as an OA equipment with multi-function and automated and networked increasingly. The above explanation is directed to the development process of hardware. As to modification of OA software (OA support software for office work improvement), only most suitable software corresponding to hardware has been designed. For example, although word processors etc. (their software for supporting document correction and edition) are widespread, the greater part of current office work is still at the early stage of computerization and the improvement in office work productivity is extremely low compared with the modification those of productivity in the field of production engineering.
To solve such a problem, an attempt has been made to describe a part of the office work as a rule and to automate the part by executing it in an event-driven manner so as to increase the productivity. Such a system is called an electronic secretary system or an intellectual agent. It is described, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 60-134371, "Method and Apparatus for Storing and Using Information", or ELISE "Office Procedures Automation Tool by State-Transition Model, Journal of Information Processing, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1989", Hiroshi Tsuji and Fumihiko Mori, or Object Lens "A Spreadsheet for Cooperative Work, Proc. of CSCW-88", Kum-Yew Lai and Thomas W. Malone.
In these conventional methods, however, emphasis is put only on automatization of a certain business and the rule only describes the condition part and the action part. Therefore, it is impossible for a human to confirm and process the business described in the rule or to stop activation of the rule for a given period. Lack of such consideration appears clearly in the expression of the rule for business description or in the fact that the function of the component for interpreting the rule is limited.